1.8.1-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick!club chapter 1 (bk. 8): of symbolism, meaningful hair, and lying So I just flat out skipped the rest of the Champmathieu trial chapters. If I regain some emotional fortitude I’ll go back and read+retroblog but we shall see. Anyway, I’m back now and will hopefully stop vanishing on you guys for the next ten days or so until I have to go away again. But we’re not thinking about that right now. Right now we’re thinking about Sister Simplice and how she is awesome. As others have also noted, I really love that Sister Simplice is skilled at medicine as well as being gentle and virtuous. Have we officially adopted her yet? Because I would like to register a request to add her to our group of Under-appreciated Female Characters. Anyway. Valjean has apparently managed to develop Javert’s superpower of randomly appearing places/sneaking up on people and shows up behind her while she’s working. And she actually sort of scolds him for vanishing, which I love. It has been pointed out already that Valjean has really not been thinking when it comes to this whole Cosette and Fantine situation. But Valjean doesn’t really seem to think most things through at this point. We saw that with the way the entire industry of the area depends on him personally, and with his tendency to throw money at impossible problems and expect that to fix them. (I never got around to discussing the stick in the wheels chapter but his behavior there mirrors his behavior during the cart incident. It’s as though he doesn’t quite make the connection that money cannot, in fact, buy miracles. Which is simultaneously frustrating, kind of endearing, and tragic when you consider that means he grew up poor enough that having money really did seem like it could cure everything ever.) So he’s spent two months not going to fetch Cosette and now it may be too late. Procrastination is bad everyone. You never know when a dark secret from your past may rear up and destroy all your plans. Dawn apparently comes very quickly in M-sur-M. Either that or the previous page and a half spanned rather longer than it would seem. Either way it is now light enough to see that Valjean’s hair has turned completely white. I know going white with stress or shock is a common narrative device, but is it a thing that actually happens? (I’m trying to work in a struck by lightning comparison, because that’s another common narrative way to suddenly acquire white hair, but I’m not remembering any storms and, as I said, I didn’t read the past few chapters so I’m not sure whether there were any metaphorical lightning strikes happening in the courtroom.) However it happened, Valjean clearly gives zero fucks about his new hair, which is quite in character for him even without the added stress of everything that’s going on. Others have talked about the symbolism of the mirror itself, so I’ll just point to this line: "La sœur se sentit glacée par je ne sais quoi d’inconnu qu’elle entrevoyait dans tout ceci." (The sister felt frozen by a kind of unknown that she glimpsed in all this.) There’s definitely something weird going on here, a sense that Valjean isn’t quite there. I think it was manypalimpsests who talked about how he’s currently liminal, and I like that a lot. Sister Simplice doesn’t know what is going on, but there’s clearly something and it’s clearly not good. And then the lying. Or, rather, the careful not-lying-while-not-quite-telling-the-truth-either. It reminds me a lot of the Clan of the Cave Bear books, where one of the aspects of the Clan (what you or I would call Neanderthals) is that they cannot lie. For them it’s because their language is gestural rather than verbal and lies could immediately be read in body language. But they are permitted to refrain from mentioning, which is precisely what Simplice is trying to talk him into doing here. It’s a kind of grey area between lying and telling the truth, and basically the reason why they don’t just stop at “i swear to tell the truth” when swearing in witnesses in courtrooms. (At least, I assume that’s one of the reasons; I’m in no way a law person so I could be hilariously off here.) Unfortunately Valjean is having none of it and demands entrance to the sick room because he is maybe in a hurry. She apparently fails to hear the maybe in there but lets him in anyway because he’s the Mayor and in a position of power deserving of her respect and obedience. And now we get a description of Fantine. I really like the phrase, “tragic noise” in reference to her breathing. Listening to people with lung diseases try to breathe is hard and painful. I’m not sure it’s the same kind of sound you get out of mothers keeping vigil though. But apparently even though she can’t breathe she’s still serene because, to paraphrase Pilf and Gascon, she is dying of Symbolism rather than an actual disease (though I always assumed it was tuberculosis personally). Also her virginity is tied to her youth and beauty, which doesn’t make sense because we have literally never known a virginal Fantine and she was plenty beautiful when we met her. Besides, I thought she had been rendered Symbolically Pure again by dint of her suffering and some fairly convoluted logic from Valjean. But whatever. She has pretty eyelashes. Good for her? She also looks like she’s more about to fly away than to die, which could be a reference to the fact that she’s so close to death that her soul is closer than ever to escaping her body. So Valjean stands over just like he did two books ago when she first arrives. They both have symbolic hair, which signifies that even though their positions are the same the situation is very different indeed. She’s dying and he’s a condemned man and they’re both on the brink of something new and irreversible. I like the idea that the entity he’s shushing is Death itself. And she wakes and asks about her child and this is not going to stop hurting any time soon, is it? Commentary Treblemirinlens Everything you said is great and I have nothing to add except to heartily agree that Sister Simplice absolutely belongs in the Under-Appreciated Female Characters Club! Fizzygingr (All the good discussion happens after I go to bed! This having an actual sleep schedule is the worst and I don’t get why anyone does it.) Oh wow, I never thought about why he tries to fix everything by throwing money at it. That’s an excellent (and really painful) point. I prefer Hugo’s solution of trying to fix everything by throwing Cosette at it. Survival is exhausting and there’s no reason to keep trying? Here, have a Cosette. It’s been thirty years since you’ve had anything resembling a close relationship? Here, have a Cosette. You’re Marius Pontmercy? Here, have a Cosette. His hair turned white in the courtroom while he was waiting to come forward. Which is not how hair works, but I’m slowly warming up to the idea. And now I feel really dumb for not picking up on the mirror symbolism, but yeah, that’s some really cool mirror symbolism. Pilferingapples (reply to Fizzygingr) I AM SO GLAD SOMEONE ELSE MISSED THE MIRROR THING, I mean I’m sorry your brain melted down as badly as mine, but YAY I’M NOT ALONE. I am in pain though, because between “You’re Marius Pontmercy? Have a Cosette”and Columbina I am laughing way too hard at Hugo. :P Kingedmundsroyalmurder (reply to Pilferingapples' reply) Throwing Cosette at problems is much better and more effective than throwing money at it, yes! Re: hair. Gotcha. That is… strange. But that’s okay. Hugo’s been playing fast and loose with biology up until now so I suppose he may as well keep doing so.